Video is more than moving pictures

It's a story with the power to connect to the emotions and memories of the viewer. It's a sequence communicating a message. Accessing, analyzing and creating video are all sub skills to bring understanding of video production as part of the storytelling process. Deconstructing the skills will make the digital story creating process a successful one for you and your students.

ACCESS Some video options are limited in school contexts. There are ways to work around issues of access, bandwidth and availability. Having a collection that has been developed and collected for teachers and students is a great place to start. Keeping your own links on a blog, wiki or social bookmarking service is a great way to make sure you will remember where to find the links you need.Learn 360 – this video repository is licensed for use in Ontario schools. Access and search capabilities make this a handy location for many quality videos to support curriculum and lesson planning.TED Talks are video collections focus on ‘ideas worth spreading’ that follow a format of a speaker on a stage sharing their thoughts on topics that inspire, mystify, and engage conversation. Topics, speakers and geographic locations, as well as educational focused videos are available.

RSAnimate videos follow an unusual format with hand drawn graphics, text and concepts support a speaker’s thoughts and ideas. There are a variety of thoughtful and thought provoking videos for self-discovery.

National Film Board (NFB) videos and resources for teachers with Canadian specific content and with licensing agreements for school districts in Ontario.

Link to RSA Animate

ANALYZE It will be up to you to view and apply your decision making skills to determine if videos suit your students, the curricular need or the topic being covered. Analysis of the content of the video to determine if it will apply to your teaching or learning needs will be an important task as a digital teacher.Applying search criteria will result in a large quantity of resources. Finding some ‘channels’ or ‘playlists’ of videos can help narrow down your search.School Tube – provides videos relevant to teachers and students. There are many related to subjects, topics and curriculum areas that could be integrated into lessons. ‘How-to’ videos in this category focus on educational areas.National Geographic hosts video specifically for children with a wide variety of topics covered.PBS Kids videos, available through YouTube, provide quality, engaging and informative video clips in a variety of topics, curricular areas and applications. The ‘Super Readers‘ focuses on reading and comprehension skills.

Vimeo for Teachers – a subcategory of all videos located on the Vimeo site, this group of videos may have the resources you were searching for. Remember to check here before you go elsewhere.

Linking video to the original site of the video is the easiest way to locate it when it is needed. Embedding video code into your blog or web site is also a great way to find it when you need it. Information about this process when using Edublogs is available at Edublogs – Embedding Video. This blog post – Embed Videos in WordPress the Right Way – also outlines in text format four ways to embed video code into a WordPress (and Edublog) site – copy and paste the embed code (html); use the ‘insert media’ button; direct link using media settings; and using a ‘plugin’.

CREATEAdding your own video with the use of cell phone video capture is now easier than ever. Collect a video clip, email it to yourself, download to your desktop or directly link it to your website, blog OR insert it into a movie creation tool such as Movie Maker or iMovie. This clip was taken at my work place yesterday. Give it a try today.Creating movie clips using a 'green screen' backdrop is another way to make a story setting move from inside the classroom to anywhere in the world. Learn more about green screen technology on Dr. Jason Ohler's site.

OR you can create a short video clip (10-20 seconds). Your video can be focused on any topic or area of interest. You can use images, music, voice recording, text or graphics to suit the topic and the tool you select. If you have never used this Web 2.0 tool before, search for a ‘how to’ video. Many users create How-To videos to support others to learn how to use new Web 2.0 applications. You can create your own or elect from

If you wish to record your own video, then use your cell phone, video camera, software such as iMovie or Movie Maker, and record yourself making a statement relevant for your digital story. Once you have captured your video, you will need to upload to a video collection site such as Photobucket, YouTube or Vimeo and link it to your story. Permissions and privacy can be adjusted to limit the audience if you wish. Here's one teacher's experience with the power of video (Peter Cameron in Thunder Bay).

Using stop motion animation tools is another way to create moving images into a story. Use a series of images, student created art or photos into OSAPAC licensed Frames software from Tech 4 Learning as one option. Another tool, free for educator use is NFB's StopMoStudio. NFB has a series of videos for educators in their StopMoStudio Animation Studio.